Fairfax's broad thinking leads it into a brave, new — and
narrower — world

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IT USED to be called The Age cubicle amendment and it
worked like this: in 1976, Alan Whalley, chairman of the Building
Appeals Board, told the Melbourne City Council that toilet cubicles
should be at least 82 centimetres wide.

Why? "Well, because when I go to the toilet I like to read
The Age and if you measure it, it is about two feet eight
(82 centimetres)."

Mr Whalley's regulation stuck for about 20 years before a
revision of the Building Code of Australia failed to mandate a
newspaper-friendly cubicle width. But for at least that period and
more, readers have complained that the size of The Age
constitutes a nuisance on trains and trams.

One former editor of The Age in the 1970s, Les Carlyon,
said: "I always felt the broadsheet size was a throwback to the
days of flat-bed printing presses and gentlemen's clubs where there
were tables to spread them on and domestic servants to iron the
newspaper sheets."

Yesterday Fairfax Media announced that from next year its two
main metropolitan daily newspapers, The Age and The
Sydney Morning Herald, would become what managing director
David Kirk termed "narrow broadsheets". The changes will also
affect The Sunday Age.

The exact size of the newspapers has not been determined but
The New York Times is being used as a model.

The plans were unveiled as Fairfax revealed that it would forge
closer links between its newspapers, digital and online
businesses.

Up to 35 jobs will be axed in Sydney as Fairfax merges the
production staff of the Herald and its sister newspaper,
The Sun-Herald. There are no immediate plans for job losses
in Melbourne.

Mr Kirk stressed that The Age and The Sydney Morning
Herald, which have been broadsheet newspapers for 152 and 175
years respectively, would not move to a tabloid size (half the
broadsheet size).

The rise of online media has focused newspaper executives'
attention on the readability and physical manageability of
broadsheets. In recent years, many long-time broadsheets have
changed to tabloid size.

The Times in London went tabloid in 2004 and The New
York Times will follow in August.

However, the preferred term in the industry is "compact" because
of negative connotations for some of the term "tabloid".

Former editors of The Age contacted yesterday, including
Carlyon, Greg Taylor, Creighton Burns, Michael Smith, Alan Kohler
and Michael Gawenda, all agreed that readers would welcome the
changes.

"I wish I had done it but it was unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago
when the company's business was totally reliant on maintaining
revenue from classified advertisements in the newspaper," said
Smith, who was Age editor from 1989-1992.

Another former editor and editor-in-chief, Michael Gawenda (1997
to 2004), now an Age correspondent in the US, said the
decision was long overdue. He had been "infuriated" when Fairfax's
then-managing director, Fred Hilmer, ruled against configuring the
new printing presses at Tullamarine for a narrower broadsheet.

"The research was overwhelmingly positive in terms of change,"
he said. "But Hilmer was not convinced. So we built the new plant
for the big broadsheet. Now how much are the changes going to
cost?"

Fairfax Media managers would not comment on the cost of
reconfiguring the presses. But one former senior editorial
executive said that it would run into "tens of millions of
dollars".

Media analysts said yesterday that they expected reducing the
size of the newspapers could save Fairfax about $14 million a year
in newsprint and ink costs. "It's all part of a global squeeze on
newspapers," one said.

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